Abhorsen Legacy
by Shar-dono
Summary: [Death, Violence, probably some swearing to be involved.] - The Abhorsen - Someone's destiny - Someone's pride - The world in 25xx (about 500 years after "Lirael"), the burdens of a lineage rebuilt, intrigues of Nobility, and the crafting of the 8th bell.
1. Ruhiel, I

**Ruhiel, I**

Ruhiel should have been a Clayr. It was not a nice thing to say about one's aunt, but it was true. Ruhiel was a gifted diviner, but neither scholar nor warrior and scared to death of the Dead. She would have been far more suited, and indeed much happier, discerning the future from clear glacial ice or wandering free and aimless just because she could. Instead, she was the Abhorsen, and she is dead.

the abhorsen is dead

It was in the witching hours of twilight and dawn when the vision first came to her. This Sassy dismissed, preoccupied as she was with courting drunken oblivion in the company of certain acquaintances and associates of her medical career.

The second time, she was throwing up into a bin by the side of someone's bed the following morning, between a splitting headache and the realization that getting this drunk the night before her final exam was, possibly, a very bad idea.

The picture of the empty, age-worn bandolier finally caught up with her in the midst of her practical final and registered itself as true, real, and important, with a metaphorical slap that sent her metaphorically reeling. Afterwards, she questioned the prudence of her action. In the elated high of her moment, however, nothing could be bizarre enough, explosive enough, to suit her sudden exit from the University of Medicine South Ancelstierre, circa 1652.

She was doing so well, too, that brooding L'coste girl with the slightly bewildered, darting eyes – until, she stabbed her final examination subject in his frozen, exposed heart with her University-issue exam-use scalpel, stole his sheet for a garish cape and stalked chillingly out of the examination theatre, not a footstep sounding from her heels in the echoing, shocked silence; thereby ruining her chances of ever returning to that elite circle that is Ancelstierre's finest, and only, healthcare and subsidiaries workforce.

The possessions that she chose to keep huddled sadly in the bottom of a camp bag as she took the train to Corvere in her "I WOULDN'T BE CAUGHT DEAD ALIVE" t-shirt, depicting a zombie and a skeleton sharing a line of crack. Her Aunt Leliel sent it to her years ago and it has been her favourite since. It was what she considered her heritage shirt, although strictly speaking, Sassy's heritage raiment would consist largely of dark blue backgrounds dusted in endless silver keys.

She slept most of the way and stared stonily back at passengers who tried to glare their resentment at her lack of taste in t-shirt slogans.

At Corvere she took a cab to Bain, and from there, an ancient bus that creaked its reluctant way to the Perimeter. She left her discman on the bus since it would be pretty useless where she was going, but took the CD with her.


	2. Crossing Over

**Crossing Over**

PERIMETER COMMAND  
NOTHERN ARMY GROUP

Unauthorized egress from the Peri-  
meter Zone is forbidden.

Anyone attempting to cross the  
Perimeter Zone will be shot without  
warning.

Authorized travellers must report to  
the Perimeter Command H.Q.

REMEMBER –  
NO WARNING WILL BE MADE

The Perimeter ran from coast to coast, parallel to the Wall and perhaps half a mile from it. A tall mesh wire fence fortified it on the Ancelstierre side, decorated with large red signs that declared its military designation and smaller yellow triangles that warned of the fence's ability to deliver lethal electrical shocks, at no responsibility to the military – which, as far as Sassy could tell, meant in very low and dodging tones that it will most certainly fail when you need it the most and it will not be the Ancelstierre Central Command's fault when it does.

She followed a badly printed arrow on one of the crimson signs to a shabby little guard house nestled snugly in a bracket of electric fencing. It sported a grimy brass knocker next to a common electrical doorbell and a sad little sign that said simply,

"CROSSING POINT"

She knocked, not even bothering to try the buzzer, and waited.

The Northern border of Ancelstierre, as defined by the Wall, has not been moved in a little over twenty-five hundred years. In fact, Ancelstierran chronology is based upon its establishment, marking this location an important and frequently ignored historical tourist site. It is marked with apologetic nervousness on the maps and omitted everywhere else whenever possible.

The North was where realities rip through the veils of perception and run you to the ground, tearing you mindlessly from screaming limb to limb; where the lights are afraid to come on in the middle of the night when things go bump, and what is unseen is best left undisturbed.

Technology had the tendency to fail out here, especially when the winds come blowing from across the Wall, carrying magic on its harsh breath. It was as if the existence of one principal corroded the other, although one could just as easily blame erratic power lines. Ancelstierre found no cause to acknowledge the sour, metallic tang of the air in her own Northern reaches, nor its many Evils and Horrors. It was the Age of Enlightenment, and such things have no place in the Modern, Educated mind.

The closest civilization was the village of Bain, which used to be a town until people started moving away after the disastrous business with the Southerlings that the government refused to acknowledge or talk about, back in the 1920s. The wide stretches of wild hills and woodlands between Bain and the Perimeter garrison hid away a number of abandoned farmsteads, empty refugee camps and overrun trailer parks, full of the rustic calm and serenity of the morning-after. Occasionally people find the urge to go hiking or camping in the region, but seldom overnight on account of the chill and Perimeter patrols.

The service between Bain and the Perimeter ran twice a day and rarely found reason to complete its journey to the garrison bus-stop, often not leaving Bain at all.

Presently, a bored young man came to the door and waved her through with barely a grunt. He had dead eyes and shuffled lifelessly across the tiny cubicle like a mindless undead Hand, pointing her to an equally squalid-looking concrete bunker in a distance. Sassy scowled and pulled her shades over her eyes. Someone was going to get some talking to; then again, that was the army's business and none of her own. The border belonged to Ancelstierre, which after today will become nothing more than peasant gossip and politics.

It was a friendly place for barbed wire and strong points, an intensive interlocking network of trenches and concrete pillboxes wreathed by writhing coils of concertina wire and rusty steel pickets in a design that has not been changed for the last eight hundred and fifty years.

A crude rise of piled rocks packed down with dirt and more concertina confronted the Wall directly at a man's height. There were no obvious breaks along its length, and large white-painted rocks placed at regular intervals make for scout posts where a soldier may pull himself up on to look over the Ancelstierran wall. Mounted on stakes and elevated over the earth every two stones were silent wind flutes the size of small trees, imbued with the faint golden glow of the Charter.

These flutes played a song heard only in Death, continuing the spells of binding laid down on ground by the various Abhorsens that have been and gone. Crafting these flutes was one of the last things an Abhorsen-in-Waiting is set to do, and casting the bindings they will sing for, the first duty of a newly appointed Abhorsen.

She strode through the Perimeter unchallenged, which annoyed her further, until she _was_ stopped, and that just ruined it all.

"Isn't the security here horrifying? UnMarked civilians running loose? Oh that certainly won't do."

"Yes, m'Lady Samael," Sassy replied coolly. "And what are you doing about it?"

The lofty porcelain figure bristled briefly. "Well!" She gathered her cape proudly, speaking pointedly to her companion. "I think I shall go to the General at once, if you'll excuse me, and have this little problem dealt with."

"She's most beautiful when she snarls, isn't she."

"Now, on top of everything else..." The young man, though as tall and pale as Lady Samael, could only be described as unfortunately gangly in the absence of a frail feminine grace. He frowned, obviously perturbed by Sassy's presence as she knew he would.

"On top of everything else, I'm here. I'm sorry. You could let me pass and pretend this never happened, like I was going to."

"Azazel, cousin." He allowed her a dry, humourless smile and threw his arm across her shoulders, leading her to the Office like a roped horse.

* * *

**Author's Notes:  
**The Ancelstierran wall is a dirt wall built parallel to the actual Wall for the soldiers to observe the sinister bugger, not to be confused with the actual Wall.  
And some name pronunciations:  
**Samael **pronounced as **Sa-May-o**, like that creature from Hellboy the movie.  
**Azazel** pronounced as **A-z-assel**, "assel" as in "tassle"


	3. Bureaucracy

**Bureaucracy**

The man steered Sassy through the door and pressed her into a metal folding chair. She submitted sullenly, several degrees of fear and shame seething in her guts.

"General, we caught _this_ wandering about the Perimeter. Please assure me your men have not allowed an unauthorised civilian to walk freely about the camp!" Samael shrieked at the sour old man behind the only desk in the tiny room. The same jet black hair that clung limply to Sassy's ears coiled gracefully serpentine about Samael's neck and shoulder like a softly glowing sculpture. Her cheeks were radiant with rage against her pale china skin, setting off her hard, glinting, flint-coloured eyes. Beautiful and terrible, like an awesome painting.

The General listened to her, weary and disinterested. The ways and insistences of the Old Kingdom eluded him and sometimes, he suspects, the people of the Old Kingdom themselves. The Perimeter command was where the military shipped their cast-aways and out-of-favour Officers. Here, they took away their guns and toys and gave them broken swords and ill-fitting armour, then told them a nightmare story and said good-night.

Except, there were no monsters in the woodworks, no secrets in the dust, only obsolete rituals, traditions, and men like himself, fallen from the eyes of their peers and superiors, stuck out of sight and out of mind.

"Yes ma'am, I see your concern. The matter will be looked into, I assure you." He had long ago ran out of patience with these No Man Lands and tended to have less with the members of the Old Kingdom's Royal family. Like many in his position, he dealt with them mainly by agreeing to everything they said and proceeding to ignore them. Old stories refer to the dead rising from the dust to walk again. As a man of reason in an age of high technology he cannot give them credit, but if the Command had been then as it is today, it was little surprise to him that the men of the Perimeter would be mistaken for zombies as they lurched hopelessly about their daily duties.

"The state of your men is disgraceful, General! You will request new armour and weaponry immediately. These people look like a pack of mongrel scavengers!"

"While you're at it, ask him to request more men and triple the defences." Sassy smirked. Cyrial, who had continued to stand over Sassy as Samael barraged the General, pressed down on her head in the gesture for silence he had used on her since she was a child.

"No," Sassy continued, unfazed. "Ask him. He doesn't care, Samael. Central Command doesn't care. They don't understand. He thinks you're just a bunch of stark-raving bone-biters. They don't remember."

Now the Princess of the Old Kingdom advanced upon her.

"Speak only when spoken to, Azazel."

"You cannot think to protect her, Cyrial." Samael hissed at her cousin. How dare he?

"She is our kinsman, Samael. Thou shall not raise a hand against thy kinsman without love, nor stain thy hands with kin blood."

This pacified, if it did not satisfy, her. She dropped her dignity enough to spit at Sassy's feet.

"Perhaps we should send for our own troops and equipment, cousin." Cyrial added, keeping his grip tight on Sassy. "Her words, though distasteful, I fear may yet ring true."

Samael gnashed her teeth, clenching and releasing her fists several times, and finally, suddenly, snapped "Out!" Grabbing a pen, she began scribbling on the back of the General's supply list, barking orders. "General! Your pigeons and telephone! Then round up your men...!"

They could not catch the rest of her plans as Cyrial pivoted Sassy quickly out of the headquarters, away from the fury.

"Do you encourage hostility deliberately or does it just happen, cousin?" He ventured ruefully as they neared the wind flutes. She shrugged.

"Where's the Abhorsen?" She asked instead.

"Aunt Ruhiel has been out of contact since her last report four days ago. It will be another three until she reports again."

Sassy lit a cigarette and took a long drag. "The Abhorsen-in-Waiting?"

"Samael?"

"Ah. Never mind."

Cyrial hesitated over his next words. The family will certainly be livid over this, but Ruhiel did not seem to share their views. "Would you like me to send Aunt Ruhiel a message?"

Sassy seemed to have lost interest in the conversation, concentrating on taking deep puffs on the smothering joint. Then, to his surprise, held his eye and said flatly, "No. She's dead."

The unmoved certainty with which she said it sent shivers down his spine. His eyes widened, remembering the horror that had led his parents and other aunts and uncles to deny Azazel and send her away. "Did you... did you sense her passing?"

"No. I was wasted most of the week. Finals."

He wanted to ask more, about how she had known, but was afraid to. This she knew as well as he, and took an acquired pleasure in his fear and underlying repulsion.

"Where was she last?" She continued to walk, flicking the burnt butt into the dust.

"Ganel, on her way back to the House." Cyrial hastened to catch up. "Azazel, you cannot cross the border tonight."

She stopped. A flicker of dread scratched her heart. "Why not?"

"There are wild things afoot, cousin, and dangers in the dark..."

"The wild dogs and giant bats that you told these guys the flutes are for?" Anyone who knew anything this far North knew this as a lie. It worked, mostly because the weary soldiers came from the South and, at any rate, did not believe in the Dead. Cyrial had the grace to look embarrassed.

"I am Abhorsen now, Cyrial. You have no right."

Cyrial was thrown briefly, but remembered who he was talking to and found pity. "Abhorsen? That cannot be. Surely the Clayr would have seen it. We would have known. Azazel, please..."

"The Clayr cannot see me." She replied coldly. "That name is dead."

"Nonetheless..."

She turned to go on her way. Having spent all of her life in the disapproval of The Family, she learnt instead the emptiness of approval.

A lasso of Charter light settled around her and drew her back. It was Samael.

"The family is gathering to receive you. A Paper wing will come." She announced, and turned to Cyrial, now concerned. "There has been word. Ruhiel is missing."

Cyrial blinked slowly and found himself whispering "I know..." Tears brimmed in his eyes as he knew this to be the truth, like he had not known when Sassy told him. "She's dead."

Samael rocked on her heels at the news. "Then we shall discuss the Succession." Her voice trembled even as she forced a hold over herself and stoned her heart. Sassy wondered calmly what it would be like to care about a death like her cousins did as she watched Samael walk away. Cyrial went to her, holding her as the beautiful proud woman stumbled, fell, and remained sitting in the sand, crying.

* * *

**Author's Death Count: 1**


	4. One Blood

**One Blood**

King Rameth brooded as the Royal Family gathered below him. Guards and servants shuffled nervously about the assembly, bringing away horses and paperwings as his wife Sayren appeared in the courtyard and welcomed them into the castle. Here and there snatches of conversation told him how his kinsmen were doing. There were rumours of a mordicant sighting in the south-west; Tirne's prize mare foaled twins this season past; Urieth's research on communicating with the Charter Stones has hit a dead-end.

Rumours travel fast indeed, He mused, as talk turned quietly towards Samael's message and the Exile's claim to succession. Only Master Derrick seemed untouched by this news, never for a moment ceasing, even for breath, on the complaint of his two sons and wilful daughter. Rameth had been King for some eighteen years and therein was his strength, to listen and observe.

A room off the main library had been readied for the meeting and beds were being made. Refreshments were served as the fifteen men and women of the King's blood gathered around an ancient table so deeply polished that its surface resembled a dark, stone mirror. Four seats stood empty as they settled themselves; Samael and Cyrial, who were but just landing on the walls, and the twins Ruhiel and Leliel.

The Abhorsen was nowhere to be found and there was little doubt among her kinsman that the worst has come to pass, although the hope remained that their fears were unfounded and she will stride through the doors in a moment, brambles in her hair and an assortment of curiosities on a stout hiking stick.

The low babble died and even Derrick held his tongue as the King took his place at the head of the table. The Queen's place was beside him and the Abhorsen's across. The Clayr took places on the left and the Wallmaker cousins on the right, while the other members of the table took seats amongst them. Once upon a time, the council of the Royal Family encompassed all of the King's closest kin, when first King Touchstone I and his son and daughter sat with the Abhorsen and the Remembrancer and those of the Clayr under the Great Charter Stones.

And this is what was remembered:  
That once they were of a ken, and came apart;  
Two lines perished, one broken, one misremembered.  
The Abhorsen twice dead, twice turned from Death  
The ancient stone prince risen to be King  
The Wallmaker begot anew from Stone and Binder  
The Clayr-daughter who Sees in the rivers of Death  
Now again are one,  
And there was much that needed be done.

Sayren spoke.

"We have gathered for Lady Samael of the Abhorsen's Household, who wishes to petition us."

Rameth nodded. He spoke with a voice of bells that tolled deep and sombre. It was solemn and commanding, a King's voice.

"That is so. Let her come forth"

This was the cue. Three people entered in a single file, squeezing by the servants filing out. The young woman in the lead scowled half-heartedly at them and bore the tired air of one who had recently exhausted herself crying.

"I am Samael, daughter of Abhorsen Ruhiel." She met all the room's eyes when the room was cleared and the doors closed and latched.

The man bringing up the rear stepped up beside her and gave a charming little bow. "I am Cyrial, son of Rameth." Rameth returned the slightest of nods. The Family knew them.

The third was their prisoner and looked to be between Cyrial and Samael's ages. Her hands were bound to her neck by a collar of Charter Marks, an inconvenience which she did not seem to have noticed. There was a harsh sound from the table, of someone old gasping in recognition. She smiled. It was nice to be among family again.

"We bring with us Azazel, discovered attempting to cross..."

"I beg your pardon, Lady Samael," A small, golden-toned child, not a day past thirteen, rose from her place between two similarly tanned and white-blonde women in bright blue waistcoats. The child herself wore white with a silver circlet beset with moonstones on her brow. "I am Amirelle," She said in a soft, musical voice that carried clear and strong to all corners of the sombre room. "And I speak for the Clayr. It is too early to bring forth your trouble. We wait, still, for another."

There was a moment of confusion and one voice, a little louder than the rest, asked "Ruhiel? But..."

"The Abhorsen is dead. A new one must be made by the next full moon." The little girl replied, "But the Scholar is coming and she shall not be pleased if we begin without her."

A quiet descended upon the table. Finally, it was the Queen's brother Jonah who got to his feet "Child," He began patiently, forcing a wane smile. "The... _Sorceress_ has not been with us for some twenty years. She has no care for our concerns, nor have we concerned ourselves with her cares. Why would she come now?"

"Perhaps it is because she is connected, my brother-in-law." Rameth startled everyone by speaking. "Is this not the matter of her sister's child, for whom she walked through Death to receive?"

Jonah submitted. "Aye, my brother, it is so." He sighed. Master Derrick, seated on his left, rested a sympathetic hand on his shoulder as he sat back down.

"Let us convene on other matters of the Family then, whilst we wait. Certainly there is no reason for her to take an interest in our affairs now where she has failed before." Queen Sayren was of the Royal line, though she could have easily passed for Clayr, save her obsidian eyes. "And Cyrial, don't think for one moment that tarrying might mean you won't have to find a date for Mid-Winter. You are twenty-seven, young man! If you have not found a suitable wife surely you are at least capable of finding a date for an evening?" Among her many talents in diplomacy, was her ability to slide from regal Queen of a powerful magical nation into the nagging Mother of her children in a heartbeat.

Prince Cyrial slid into his seat on his father's right hand, properly cowed and chastised as his Queen-Mother went on. "If I don't hear anything in a week I will personally set you up with the most boring princess I can find. Do you hear?"

Samael, and several other aunts, uncles and cousins, chuckled, barely able to conceal their amusement. Sassy retreated into the sidelines, now bound and ignored, to rest against the cool stone wall. She had caught the look that passed between mother and son that said it was but a charade to lighten the mood. Affection towards your fellow men; an ailment she knew and understood, but could never really, as they said, "get into".

She was just getting bored as Master Urieth explained his thoughts and research needs, when a burnt, metallic taste began to blossom in the air next to her. "Oh, for Charter's sake," It sighed irritably, barely an apparition, at Sassy's collar. "Just hang on a minute, girl, we'll get rid of that soon enough."

"It seems fairly unnecessary, especially when they're more comfortable that you didn't, Aunt Leliel." The prisoner noted calmly in the room of suddenly petrified people turning slowly to look at her. The stench of Free Magic grew stronger as the ghostly figure of a middle-aged, sour-faced woman gathered substance and took a step forward, as though through a window.

"Good day, cousin." Rameth nodded graciously in greeting, a small crease between his brow the only sign of any disdain or distress he might bear.

"Not really, Rameth. I would be here more personally except someone had seen fit to place me under house arrest, for some unfathomable reason." Leliel, or rather the Sending of Leliel, replied, straightening the magical image of her long, dark blue coat and molten chocolate curls.

Rameth looked about the table with a raised eyebrow and settled his gaze on an unflinching in-law, the sister of a dead King. "This shall be addressed, Leliel. You have my word."

"She is a Free Magic Sorceress!" The ancient princess hissed, leaning maliciously across the table. "An outcast! Necromancer! She must not interfere with us, not like she did before! We will not make the mistake of listening to you again, witch! Your idiot sister cannot protect you now."

"I would slap you silly for speaking against her, Imiral, if I were not so certain it would kill you as I am now." The edges of the Sending crackled.

"We were discussing Azazel's attempt to cross the Wall, Aunts." Samael cleared her throat politely, speaking from the place held usually by the Abhorsen-in-Waiting. Imiral sank back in her chair. The Sending sizzled in the air and looked to the girl with interest. Samael cleared her throat again, slightly embarrassed at her own audacity. "As I was mentioning, Azazel was found and caught at the Perimeter with intent to cross and enter the Kingdom."

"And why not?" Samael could not help but flinch from the testy image. "This is her home, isn't it?"

"If you remember, cousin, she was fostered into exile some twenty years ago to Ancelstierre."

"Ahh yes, Sayren, thank you. It rather slipped my mind." The Queen managed a smile for Leliel's courtesy. Though it was not without fear, the late Abhorsen's sister held her gravest respect. She did not see, as many no doubt did, a Free Magic Sorceress who had turned her back on her duty and calling, scheming treachery and atrocities in her towers. Instead, Sayren remembered a girl who tried to knock the teeth out of some guardsman's mouth for troubling her sisters with saucy names and spent a week in bed with broken bones; and she remembered the stern, disapproving face of a girl who lectured her cousins scathingly as she fixed their rascally accidents so their parents need not know what they have been up to. Perhaps this was her failing.

"We compromised once, Leliel, when you brought that abomination from Death." Sassy cringed and tried to pretend they were not speaking about her. "We compromised again and exiled it rather than execute a child, even one as unnatural as this. What will you have us now? We who are the protectors of this land, the builders of order and binders of the Dead! We let ourselves be run around to the whims of a Free Magic blasphemer and a creature of Death!"

The smell of Free Magic flared her nostrils and her little gimlet eyes bore into the sending image, as though if she bore hard and long enough, she could burrow a hole through Leliel's skull, leagues away in her grave, dark tower. Imiral was old, perhaps five or ten years over ninety, and unafraid of most things in life and death, from merely being old.

"Perhaps, with your obsession, you would like to visit the River of Death, Imiral." Leliel, on the other hand, derived her authority from an absolute unwillingness to tolerate any foolishness and claimed her right to do so from sheer notoriety.

Samael knew nothing of her Aunt Leliel except by reputation, but she knew well Imiral's foolishness and stamina to goad even the sweetest tempered of men to a rage. It annoyed her that the rest of the table sat in rapt fascination, allowing the interruption to carry on as it did, that nobody seemed concerned about the matters at hand, that the cousin-of-whom-they-do-not-speak-of, her first cousin, apparently, was giving her a sympathetic eye, and that same cousin, who was attempting to steal her birthright, the only thing she will ever receive from Ruhiel. She brought her hands down hard on the table.

"Azazel says she's the next Abhorsen!"

**

* * *

**

**Author's progressively degenerating thoughts:  
**Huzzah! Family conferences. Fun!  
Samael snaps. It's always awesome to watch pretty girls get in a rage. Awesome, like a beautiful raging fire.  
Uh... I'm out of things to say.  
Oh, and feel free to flame/abuse/whack me over the head for any drop in story/writing quality anywhere along this whole fic.


	5. Sarsaparilla

**Sarsaparilla  
**

Sasparilla L'coste was a ghost in both worlds.

Her Secondary School counsellor was deeply concerned about her brooding ways, how she seemed to care little for the company of others and even less about her grades. The girl went out of her way, she wrote in one report, to stick out and go on to suffer for this. The counsellor, a Ms. Hetheridge, was a lady who believed that the natural state of little girls lies in pastel frilly dresses and birthday parties with ice-cream cake and bright balloons. Sassy, in particular, bothered her as being a poor lonely foster child to whom the L'costes paid no attention to. This said to her that Sasparilla required That Special Hetheridge Touch.

She took her to the zoo, where Sassy spent the entire time fascinated with the snakes and spiders. She got her invited to birthday parties which Sassy never turned up, to all the other guests' relief. She set her up on dates with nice boys who would always wind up locked, stuck or otherwise trapped somewhere else in the theatre by the time the movie starts. She got her to go to an amusement park with some nice, model girls, but Sassy spent the whole day beside kiddy-ride lines, whispering to the children how the rides were really monsters waiting to devour the tastiest child to go on the ride – and oh… don't you look like a nice, juicy one.

In her next report, she referred to Sassy's contact relative, Lady Leliel of the Old Kingdom, calling the girl incorrigible and menacing, and would her ladyship be so kind as to join her in her office one afternoon for a little sit-down? Aunt Leliel came, and reading the report in mumbles to herself next to Sassy, congratulated her loftily on being incorrigible then chided her for being noticeably menacing. "The trick, my dear, is to menace in an absolutely unobtrusive manner. Like cheating, so they don't catch you at it" were her exact words.

Sassy was impressed. Ms. Hetheridge never bothered her or Aunt Leliel again. She did offer several recommendations to the L'costes via telephone to send her into military schools or delinquency centres, but the L'coste family being a fabrication, they merely informed her that they couldn't care less if she got the child arrested and sent to an Institution.

Years later Ms. Hetheridge became a bitter old bat about children and counselled largely by telling them they are worthless little monsters and nobody cares if they died by the side of the road the next day. This new method surprisingly got more success than any of her previous, although Ms. Hetheridge had long ago stopped caring.

Left alone, Sassy went back to wandering through the background of High School activity, barely noticed. The faculty was surprised at graduation, having never heard of her before, when she claimed top grades and made Medical School. She took to the science of forensics with certain glee and became known among her peers as "morbid", some with more admiration than others.

Sassy liked the dead. They were generally silent and offered better company than the living, having no concepts of subterfuge or treachery. Death was the final truth and you can't get more honest than dead. You always know where you stand, with the dead.

* * *

**Author's Other Words:  
**I adore counsellors, but I could never eat a whole one... I used to go to a Catholic school. Once I told the new counsellor that "whatever it was they said i've done, the devil made me do it." It started as a prank. Then the man tried to exorcise me.

**Sasparilla** is a corruption of Sarsaparilla, which is a type of plant, butalso a pop made by FNknown as "Sarsi".


	6. A Secret Meeting

**A Secret Meeting**

It was not that Samael disliked people; she simply loathed dealing with them.

She despised them, them with their empty smiles and helpless coddling, resorting always to bury problems that were not their own in insincere kindness; them and their perfect self-assurance and self-importance, neatly packing all things into their petty, self-satisfied perspectives. Most of all, Samael hated their inability to regard her as anything beyond a disadvantaged foster child, to be soothed and put to bed at any sign of a temper.

Time and again she wondered what her life would be if she had been left to be raised alone by the Sendings of the Abhorsen's House.

Sometimes, she wonders what would have passed if she were truly a Princess of the Blood, and not just the neglected, fatherless child of one of the Queen's many cousins.

Would she be so inconsequential then, she wonders?

Some time before midnight, under the cover of darkness, Charter and stone, four met in a little-used study that used to belong to Crown Prince Cyrial. Mostly it was used to closet the young man whenever he was in need of a good grounding. Currently, it was being used to store his old furniture.

"Amirelle," The King's stern voice came through the thick wooden door. "What is it that you are not telling us." He spoke a statement, rather than a question. It hung in the air for a long time.

"Ruhiel walked the river," The child's silver whisper came at last. "But she did not return. Her bells are lost, and the dead shall again, walk."

"So she is not dead?"

"No Abhorsen can truly be dead, your majesty. Even as they pass through the Ninth Precinct, a shadow remains. That is their last sacrifice." The quiet, sombre speaker was a Librarian from the Great Library, one of the Clayr's elite.

"You speak in riddles, cousin."

"We only speak of what we know." The Librarian replied a touch tersely.

"What about the girl?" Sayren interjected kindly. "Is she really…?"

"Yes." Rameth backed down. "I apologise, Clayr's Daughter. It is Azazel and not the Abhorsen we are discussing, after all."

"There is nothing we can say about the exile. That name is a dead name. Her existence is one that is hidden from us. The Clayr is blind to her, fate and will."

Rameth sighed heavily. "What about Leliel? Will she…"

"I have never believed that Li'l holds a single wicked thought against you, my love." The Queen, again.

"And yet…"

"We have Seen nothing, Rameth," Amirelle whispered. If the Voice of the Nine Day Watch was disapproving of either the King or the Queen, she made no sign of it. "Nothing: neither to redeem nor condemn the Scholar and her ward."

The words she used were impressive for such a young child, but she was Amirelle of the Clayr, gifted and advanced beyond her years, and currently, the highest representative of the Clayr. There were those who would claim that she lived the life of Aramille the White, dead a hundred years, in her dreams.

"If that is all you have Seen, then why are you here, and not a lesser Clayr?"

"Because this is all we See, Rameth my brother. The Abhorsen has not passed on without the fore-sight of the Clayr for over three hundred years. We See things stirring, something enticing the dead towards Life and an assortment of scattered visions we have yet to identify, but nothing more, and we…_ I_, am afraid."

"Five hundred years ago, a similar blindness fell over the Red Lake and Lirael Goldenhand, whose lot it was to stand against its terror." The Librarian started to explain.

"Are you suggesting that Azazel or Leliel…"

"No." The falter in her voice made the words harsher and more ominous than she had intended. "This is much greater than a silly woman and the consequences of her sentimentality. We speak of a massed effort against the Clayr's Sight. Next to this, your cousin and the exile's return are nothing more than domestic trivialities."

"We fear the worst, brother." Amirelle finished, barely audible. "There may be a great power abound, one greater than any has seen for five hundred years."

The guttering candles in their regularly-spaced alcoves along the corridor threw deep shadows across the empty walls. A blue-robed piece peeled away from the door and crept away, its mind wrapped in turmoil over three unspoken words: _The Bright Shiners_.

Who else… _what_ else, could command such power?

Every child has heard the Ballad of Lirael Goldenhand and how the Sightless Clayr daughter came to acquire her legendary name. It was performed every winter at the end of the Mid-winter Festival, narrated by the Bird of Dawning. Little girls would fight each other tooth-and-nail to play Lirael. Samael has always preferred Queen Sabriel, the Abhorsen.

Seven stood against the Last for the Seven who broke him in the Beginning:

Remembrancer, the Goldenhand, for Astarael Death-Bringer; Sabriel for Saraneth, the Abhorsen's bell; Prince Sameth, Wallmaker's Heir, for Belgaer whose tone beckons Thought; Princess Ellimere for Dyrim of the Voice; The Dog for Kibeth, walking before Lirael from the first; the Clayr for wakeful Mosrael; and King Torrigan, called Touchstone the First, for Ranna the Sleeper.

There are no gods in the Old Kingdom, and if there were, they were not it.

They are the Great Ones, Free Magic Spirits from the Beginning, remembered in the bells of Necromancers and Abhorsens alike; in the Charter, the bloodlines and the land itself – but they were not gods.

She knew the stories well, and more. They were more than a festive tradition to her. They were her heritage, the legacy given her by right of blood and Charter. These tales, and the right to one day put on the Abhorsen's sword, and stand tall between her people and Come What May.

"If it truly were so dire a power that the kingdom faces, then the talents of the Abhorsen will no doubt be essential." Samael whispered softly to herself. Suddenly, she was terribly frightened.

Among the Abhorsen Emeritus' many failings was her oversight in the training of her apprentice. Indeed, at times it seemed that she did not even realise she had one. Samael was practically self-taught; and now a panic rose amidst the deep recesses of her consciousness: _What if I'm not good enough?_

"No, Samael, you have to be. And if you are not, you will be. Just like Sabriel, like Lirael. There is no-one else, Sam." _Not even her._

_Her._ Sasparilla L'Coste. Azazel, the not-born child of Aeriphrel who is sister to the Abhorsen Ruhiel and the Sorceress Leliel. A miscarried wish for whom the Sorceress tampered Death and Charter to deliver. Azazel the Blasphemer, Azazel the Exile.

How can one such as she possibly conceive to be the next Abhorsen?

The more Samael thought of it, the more curious she became… until finally, she found herself standing in the dark, before a door bolted and barred from the outside.


End file.
